“You’re not leaving… if you leave, I can’t help you. Just stay. We will have a press conference. Explain…” I jump in, cutting my mother off.

“There is nothing to explain… I didn’t do anything wrong.” My brow furrows at what she is trying to insinuate. She shrugs impassively. “Wow, you don’t even believe me.” I shake my head in disbelief.

I look to my father, who is too engrossed in his work to care what we’re discussing.

How can he just sit there ignoring us?
Her brow raises when she looks at him, then she shakes her head as though she’s thinking the same thing I am.

What did I ever do to make you want to pretend as though I don’t exist?
“I can promise you one thing… Princess.” Disdain drips from her lips when she says it.

I sit straight, my shoulders set back, to show I’m not so easily intimidated by her anymore. Although my stomach knots, telling me otherwise. “If you leave this house again, it will be your last time.” Her head tips to the side to study me. “Or… maybe it won’t…” she muses.
It will.
“What incentive do I have to stay?” My lips pucker and curl up with indignation.

There’s nothing she can do once I’m gone this time.
“I would watch your tone.” Her voice drops, making the warning into a threat, before it perks back up. “And don’t make that face, this was your father’s idea.” She nods to him. “Isn’t that right, Dear?” Her teeth clench together as a tight smile forms on her lips.

“Yes, she’s right.” He looks up at me for a split second, a strange but all too familiar look in his eyes, then goes back to working.

The look, if you’re wondering, is what normal people wear when they are guilty of something. But a man who has no care or concern for anyone but himself couldn’t possibly have anything to be guilty of. Unless in some strange twist of events he is deciding to care after years of overlooking me.
That’s highly unlikely though.

Twelve…

I was twelve when he no longer saw me, when he no longer laughed with me, and when I was left to be raised properly… like her… a woman I could never be like.

Emersyn Vallis is a first time author with Adjournment being the first book in the Fated Series. Currently residing on the east coast with her husband and three children she is typically mistaken for being quiet and reserved her friends often describe her as a spastic spider monkey and always the first to be there with her quick wit to pull you back up when you’re feeling down. After reading as a hobby for most of her life it wasn’t until she had discovered R. L. Mathewson’s ‘Neighbor from Hell Series’ and Tara Sivec’s ‘Playing with Fire Series’ that she came up with the idea to fuse comedy and suspense together and her passion for writing was born.